‘The “Gypsy” Stereotype Affects Us All’

As a child and a teenager, I preferred to keep the fact that I am Sinto to myself. This also has to do with the fact that my family was persecuted during the Nazi era. My grandfather was terrified that something like that could happen again, which is why we didn’t live our culture openly to the outside world and spoke only German at home and not Romani.

My family underwent incredible suffering under the Nazis. My great-grandmother was a Sintesa and she had many siblings whose families were deported to concentration camps. Only a few returned — the others were murdered. In my opinion, there is far too little discussion about the persecution of the Sinti and Roma during the Nazi period. To this day, it’s little more than a footnote in the history books.

Because my great-grandmother was married to an entertainer who was not a Sinto, the Nazis didn’t initially target her for deportation. My great-grandmother suspects that the district head was well-disposed toward her and concealed her ethnic background in her file. She was supposed to be deported later and her children were to be sterilized, but that didn’t happen either. They were lucky.

Nobody Suspected Anything at School

The stories about that period were one of the reasons we kept our backgrounds under wraps. Many Sinti are still highly suspicious of state institutions such as agencies, schools and hospitals. Some are also afraid of getting lumped together with Roma who have immigrated from Eastern Europe since the 1990s and who are also the subject of strong prejudices. About half of the Sinti in my circle of relatives and acquaintances don’t reveal their true identities for that reason.

No one at school knew that I was a Sinto. Like many other German Sinti, I have light skin and light brown hair and don’t stick out at all in Hanau (near Frankfurt), where I was born.

After my high school graduation, I attended an educational conference organized by the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, where I got to know other young Sinti who have always been open about their roots. As a result, I began wondering why I should make a secret of it.

Some Cracked ‘Gypsy’ Jokes

When I came out to my friends and acquaintances as a Sinto, they reacted in several different ways. Some said: “That can’t be true, you don’t look like one.” Others just quietly accepted the information. Still others cracked gypsy jokes.

At first, I would often hear lines that were apparently meant to be funny. When I spilled something on my pants once, someone said: “You gypsies, you’re so dirty.” The term “gypsy” is often used carelessly in our society and some friends let lines slip like: “Look at the gypsies over there,” in reference to people who looked poor or somehow suspicious. They would then quickly back pedal: “Oops, I didn’t mean it like that.”

I let a handful of friendships peter out because I realized that it wasn’t good for me to surround myself with people who foist their prejudices on me. Many people simply know too little about the Sinti. We’ve lived in this country for hundreds of years yet I’ve been praised for speaking such good German.

Hateful Facebook Posts

When I was at university, I was responsible for a residential area that was home to many Roma for a year and a half on behalf of the Youth Welfare Office. The local newspaper reported about it and I wrote an editorial that was intended to help inform people about Sinti and Roma.

The result was three days of hateful comments posted on Facebook and on the newspaper’s website — things like: “The Roma steal from others and have their children defecate on graves in the cemetery. They’re social parasites and asylum tourists.” There’s also a link between these enduring clichés and the reporting: The media too often has a negative slant in its coverage of Sinti and Roma.

We come from different countries and have grown up in different ways. But because we are part of a minority, I think we all have to stand up for each other. We have a stronger political voice when we speak together. And the “gypsy” stereotype affects us all equally.

That’s why I’ve been holding workshops and lectures on antiziganism as a freelancer for the last six years and have gotten involved in organizations seeking to strengthen Sinti and Roma and to raise awareness in the rest of society about prejudices.

Silas Kropf lives in Hanau and works full-time for a personnel and management consultancy.

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Article source: https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-gypsy-stereotype-affects-us-all-a-6f0371e3-2ead-4180-b1d0-1e34cfaa91f2#ref=rss